loose-and-goose

[loose-and-goose]

"Nothing died, it just got buried"

It's the end times and the mortician is the strongest man in town.

A mother of three comes to him wailing. Her oldest was turned: killed her other two sons and she had to leave them behind -- locked all the doors and escaped through the basement window.

The mortician calls his wife and the funeral planners. The mother gives him the keys and she pleads, "Take care of him". His wife assures her, "We always do".

When they open the front door, he's got dried blood splattered on his skin, gone blue and bloated from the very same stilled in his veins. The mortician raises his rifle. He shoots for the knees -- the casket hides the lower body well, nobody notices wounds from the waist down. He'll look nice. They dress him up good.

The funeral planners move in, and pin him down. The mortician puts his whole weight on him, holding him fast, a hand on the forehead, another on the chin, and he bows his head. His wife says the prayers at his side as she pulls out the sewing kit. She threads his lips shut, never to part again.

The service is beautiful for an apocalypse. They use succulents in the place of flowers. The mother views her son one last time. His limbs are bound, he growls through his pursed lips as he lurches against the chains, reaches for his mother one last time.

She weeps but she knows better than to reach back. She steps away. The pallbearers close the casket and keep a firm grip on it despite the rocking, the banging, the muffled, garbled shouting from within.

"May he rest in peace." The mortician's wife offers comfort as the pallbearers shovel and the choir sings a hymn, offering another loved one up to their merciful Father as they bury him down below.

#EVERYBODY SAY THANK YOU YAOI #I think I'll add this to the speculative fiction anthology #Free Write

[loose-and-goose]

prompt: a window on a window

at that age now where we're trying to understand

just a little north of cutting everyone off

now we're in the business of trying to understand,

or trying to connect without understanding

I don't know how much longer we'll have you.

but your house is so gross, and you used to be addicted to the bottle before the stroke,

but the stroke doesn't change how weird you were with us before

doesnt change that you had no idea who I was

after just a couple of years apart

and I wasn't sure if I should take that as a cue to disengage

or a sign that i needed to try harder

you refuse to leave the house but you're living in squalor

and I refuse to step foot in there again.

but you're the last person alice who might know

what grandma was like in high school.

and I need to know more about the lady

who did cheer squad and judo

and taught us all how to read

I'm reaching through a window into the last

reaching for you

hoping I can get you to open up your own

and let us see

#Poetry #free write

[loose-and-goose]

(Prompt was a Nat Geo photo that involved elephants)

"This ain't, no this ain't--"

My sister will recognize this opening immediately There's a memory of the three of us attending my mother's step practice for the Delta Sigma Theta sorority in Hawaii, all of us rehearsing the moves, ready to follow in her footsteps as the next generation of elephant garment wearing Deltas. In my mind, there was no question. There were only nine divine orgs for Black people to pledge to (in my mind), and Black people legally had to join one when they became adults (in my mind). Girls joined sororities and did step shows, boys joined fraternities and strolled while twirling canes. Members of certain sororities only married men of certain fraternities. In my elementary school brain, this was the law.

In 5th grade while leading the line from lunch, I asked my teacher what sorority she was in. She told me she wasn't in one. I didn't understand that, because she was a living, breathing, adult Black woman. She gently informed me that actually, no, joining a sorority was not written anywhere in the U.S. constitution.

These days I don't know any Black girls or boys my age who pledged to one of the Divine Nine. I went to the salon the other day and my stylist, age twenty-two, whispered as we looked at the owner's Delta Sigma Theta sorority painting on the wall, "I think they're cults."

#free write #BUT I WANNA GO TO A STEP SHOW WAAAAH

[loose-and-goose]

yeah this dialogue made me crack up so. ya romance novel excerpt.

“No, Ivan did not come down with the vapors. And he didn’t say that his feelings were hurt.”

“So why–”

“But mine would have been, and I don't know if I want to be with someone that talks to people like that!” Dessa finished, slamming the “ENTER” button on her keyboard.

“That’s valid.” Noemi exhaled slowly. “However I must ask: how exactly did you talk to him afterward?”

Dessa wondered if she was sweating literally or just mentally.

“Seriously, Dessa? Ripping him a new asshole pussy?” Noemi squinted as she repeated the words.

“Ladies.” Mr. Rowley cleared his throat at the front of the classroom.

#Dessa is so (SOB EMOJI) #the reveal that the teacher is there and listening. BAHAHAHAH

[loose-and-goose]

"It felt like we needed a toboggan this week"

The neighbors have a husky

I see it every now and then from the window and think,

"You shouldn't be here"

When it's 80 degrees out and sunny

and that husky can't unzip and shed its heavy fur coat

"Oh God, you shouldn't be here."

When I eat an avocado in winter

when my sister plants the seeds and they grow in her room,

with no plans for soil or rooting the tree:

"You should not be here."

It felt like we needed a toboggan this week

and through the window I saw

the neighbors' husky frolicking with their daughter

rolling around, overjoyed

at home and belonging with them and I thought,

"It's okay for you to be here."

And I sat at the window,

too cold to go out but hoping the sliver of sun would help

with my vitamin D deficiency,

wondering if I should be here either.

#when your ass was imported <3 #free write #poetry

[loose-and-goose]

"A long silence grew and hardened"

My mom fell down the stairs this week - it was fine, she was fine, I was scared, she was laughing, but ultimately that's what she gets for being on that damn phone while braving a flight of stairs.

We inherited the bad habit of laughing at inappropriate times from her. I remember, not long after the divorce, mom joking, "I was a man!" with tears in her eyes as she recalled moving furniture and doing home improvements and clearing driveways all alone.

My mom fell down the stairs and she was fine, but she twisted her ankle and banged up her knee. Then the snow came.

My mom thinks she's slick. She told my sister, "I'm just going out for a minute to turn on my car". And ten minutes later, my sister found the woman still outside, clearing the driveway by herself, still limping.

"Mom and I are beefing." My sister told me. "I don't understand why she does stuff like that. And then I thought about it, and did understand, and now I'm mad at our father again."

I agreed, knowing what she meant. Most things that frustrate me about my mother, I can find a way to blame our father for.

My mom hobbled down the stairs a little later. She looked at my sister and said, "Does somebody have a problem with me?"

A long silence grew and hardened between them. My sister said, "Does somebody have a problem with me?"

Neither of them spoke. Mom rolled her eyes. My sister blew a sarcastic kiss her way. Everyone laughed, all forgiven.

#free write #sooooorrrrryyyyyyy

[loose-and-goose]

"It is not who begets us that matters, but where fate places us"

Surely, Icarus should have been a genius.

Son of the greatest engineer in Crete,

Surely, he had a most mathematical, logical, practical mind.

But maybe it doesn't matter who begets us.

What's a genius to do in isolation?

Trapped within four walls, waking and staring at the same ceiling every morning,

never experiencing anything new,

watching his father catch and kill birds for their feathers

in hopes of teaching man to fly.

What can a mathematical, logical, practical mind do but count the days?

Even the most prodigious son

left unamused, unstimulated,

is nothing more than a spectacular fool.

Days, months, years, decades later?

Who knows? Only Icarus. He was the one counting days.

Maybe two years and a global pandemic later,

You give this beautiful mind wings

And you think he will listen when you tell him how to fly?

The boy who learned all the formulas from over his father's shoulder,

who hasn't felt the lap of the waves on his fingertips,

or the warmth of the sun shining directly on his face

in only Icarus knows how long --

You think you can tell him how to fly?

#sorry that this poem is the other icarus poem's cousin but in a way this one is prettier in others it's not #debating whether or not to add this to the archive anthology. why not. probably will. #sorry for mentioning the pandemic. i was playing to win. #free write #Tagamemnon #Icarus #every day i walk into that writing group and i say youre getting one of four things: #utterly inane musings about love. daddy issues. nonsensical lore. or Greek mythology. #and you WILL eat it up every time.

[loose-and-goose]

"And I'm not greatly disturbed, I answered with a fine, careless air."

"You should take a day off," the other prison guards tell me on occasion, while simultaneously hoping that I never take a day off because that would mean someone else would have to do the job.

"No, I can't." I always say, "There are always more prisoners to execute."

Taking a day off is how you excuse yourself from the blame. Taking a day off lets you forget how many claim to be innocent, how many have been exonerated after the fact, how many don't fully understand what they have done.

That's why the king never attends the executions. But I must always attend. I must listen. I must feel their fear, their anger. I must be the kind arms for them to drift off into, the warm hand to hold, for no one else would be so kind.

"It's gotta be disturbing," Another guard says. He's just given a woman her last meal. "You've gotta be greatly disturbed. That's why you do all that crying."

He is straightfaced and emotionless, and I wonder how I am the disturbed one.

"I cry because it's emotional." I answered, copying his fine, careless air. "And I am not greatly disturbed."

#they ate this one up i was like girl. ok.... #free write

[loose-and-goose]

"We are all failures, at least the best of us are."

"Try again."

Stella's would be teacher didn't even watch her try to perform the spells anymore. They'd been at this for days.

He wouldn't take her on as an apprentice unless she could snuff out the light on the lantern he kept outside.

At first, he watched her closely as she waved her arms before it, trying basic spells to create a breeze or a downpour or a pocket of space with no oxygen. But none of it worked, and at a certain point he needed to use the restroom and let the dogs out and the like, so he'd settled on peeking through the window while he washed the dishes this morning.

Stella, for her part, was nearing the end of her rope. She unhooked the lantern from where it hung outside. She breathed out.

"Please?" She whispered. "Can you please just go out?"

And much to her surprise, it did.

The kitchen window flew open, and Seamus leaned his head out.

"Good! Now I know you have the two most important traits for a magician: creative thinking, and asking nicely."

#free write #i love this one but the girls were nottt banging with it fr #in my mental this exists in the same universe as Marceileen

[loose-and-goose]

"Slowly I am beginning to develop my inner sense of sight."

I achieved enlightenment last Tuesday and I am instantly regretting it. It is so terrible existing in a mind that extends beyond the limits of this mortal coil, while still having to deal with a world full of people very much still bound by their mortal coils.

It's not even like Scarlett Johanson Lucy. It doesn't give you powers or grant you instant ascension into a higher being. You still have to die just like everyone else, and maybe this is all a ploy to get us to die faster.

The problem with achieving enlightenment on a Tuesday afternoon is that you'll still be clocked in at Chuck E. Cheese. and there's nothing you can do about it. Now you know that money's not real, but you know that you still need it to survive within the confines of the mortal coil. Alternatively, you could just die, and by the time you're clocking out covered in teeth marks and sweat from being inside the mouse, this option seems more and more appealing.

What's worse is it's not even hump day. Ever worse, hump day doesn't really count in an ever repeating, monotonous, meaningless existence. It's not even hump day of your life and you're gonna have to clock in again tomorrow morning for the sake of your mortal fucking coil, and maybe you should just die.

#free write #'inside the mouse' best thing ive ever said

[loose-and-goose]

"He has a wild imagination and tells me things that must be true."

It is at this moment that I realize this is not a hostage situation, but more of a willful Romeo and Juliet type bit. I decide to try one more time.

"That's the thing, Bella. They are true. Of someone else. Specifically, his twin. Who he tried to kill." I am speaking slowly at a tempo that would put a child to sleep, because if I go any faster, my composure will not keep up. "This would make him a liar. Do you like being kidnapped and held for ransom by a liar?"

"Well yes, actually, if that's what this is, then I suppose I do!" Bella flips her hair and crosses her legs and her shackles jangle a bit.

This sucks for me. Largely because, I do not care what she likes. I just want the payout for saving her. And moreover, I want my identity back from my attempted-murderous twin.

#i just be at that group writing ANYTHING #free write

[loose-and-goose]

"In the cafe of mistaken orders,"

In the cafe of mistaken orders, there are many laughs, but all marred by a twinge of anxiety. Nobody winds up at this cafe by mistake, and everybody knows that every entry is an opportunity for a really unwanted rebirth.

When you find yourself in this cafe, you request the most complicated dishes you can think of. Improbably ingredients and impossible improvisations -- an order for a boneless pizza, a lemonade without lemons, a non-vegan head of cabbage, a raw-vegan well done steak. Do not let them get your order right.

This is kind of unnecessary, because a la post Tower of Babel, nobody in this cafe can understand one another. It all sounds like nonsense, gibberish, and nobody is ordering or getting anything that makes sense or they want anyway.

Unfortunately, when Adrien entered the cafe and ordered a grilled cheese on rye, this was what actually got delivered to her table.

The laughter was replaced with silence, stares. The tension left the room as all eyes fell on her. The ceiling opened up and a blinding light shone in. Then, a booming voice erupted forth.

"CONGRATULATIONS, CHOSEN ONE!"

#free write #the boneless pizza name drop that none of the old white ladies understood... fine. it was for me.

[loose-and-goose]

"Minutes of exposure under the sun, suddenly small things ignite."

What started as a rumor had now become folklore.

"Never tell the truth under the light of the sun."

Exchanging facts and information, sure. Lying? Encouraged. But a secret needed to be revealed indoors, if not under the wash of the moon's light.

But sometimes, the timing just feels right.

And the time was now. It had to be now. Because he was washed in gold as the sun began to set. His smile glimmered, illuminating every dimple and freckle on his face. For the thousandth time now, he'd come running when she needed him -- this time, her car broken down on the side of the road, and he helped her affix a donut where her front right wheel had been an hour ago. Joking, smiling, rousing her spirits, raising the words from her mouth that she'd been longing to say for longer than she'd ever care or dare to admit--

He took a drag of his cigarette and it came rolling out,

"I love you." She said, and it was just as much fact as it was a truth. "Really. I love you."

She felt her cheeks burn, felt the warmth well up within her, and knew that this was what love was.

Then, the kindling, a first strand of her hair caught light, and she went up in flames.

#i will write something so weird and be like oh havent you heard the myths? #free write

[loose-and-goose]

"It is only in sorrow that weather masters us. In joy, we face the storm and defy it."

Moses had been having a bad mental health week. This sucked for the rest of the crew, because he was the only one that really knew how to talk to the tides.

Ishmael was steering the ship with expert precision. He'd guided the lot of them through dodging kraken limbs and siren songs and really, really pissed off orcas. His skills were sharp, and the rest of the men would have commended him for it if they had time between torrential rains and batterings at the behest of sea beasts.

Odysseus had been sent down below deck this time, the eighth person in four days to try and coax their commiserating captain out of bed. The skies were growing dark again. Ishmael noticed that the waves were beginning to swirl, to pool in agitation.

He could almost hear the seawater himself, chanting, demanding:

"WHERE IS MOSES?"

He sighed, sliding down the mast and ready to start barking commands to the men when suddenly, the clouds parted, the waves calmed, the sun began to shine again.

"Oh, I know you missed me."

Ishmael turned to see him: Moses, clothed in his dingy robe, his beard grown unruly and scruffy.

Odysseus appeared at his side, an empty carton of cookie dough ice cream in hand. "Yeah, I'm gonna need some overtime pay."

#free write #SILLY!

[loose-and-goose]

"But a mermaid has no tears, therefore she suffers so much more"

She has tears -- there's just no way to see them. And if you can't see them, do they really exist? Eyes adjusted to the deep don't grow reddened with salt, bodies that don't breathe are incapable of gasping for air, and beneath the waves no one can hear the wailing. What is crying if not the amalgamation of these things?

Didn't you know?

Before the mermaids, seawater was fresh. And the land dwellers drank and drank and drank of it, never knowing thirst.

But then the mermaids came. Then one fell in love. Then one died. Then one left all of their loved ones behind. And slowly, over time, that fresh water turned to brine, overwritten with the tears of the merfolk's cries.

They shed tears. But in the moment the drops leave their ducts, they just become another drop in the ocean,

And the mermaid thought she was the only one, even after all this time.

The suffering is silent, but never has it been dry.

#free write #about to just dump a bunch of these on here. boyee

[loose-and-goose]

Free Write Prompt:

"They've got rivers of gold, but the wind blows right through you. It's no place for the old."

Meemaw's been waiting her whole life for this day, btu we've been doing everything in our power to stave it off.

She'd been a devout worshiper her whole life - said her prayers first thing in the morning and last thing before bed, blessed every meal, anointed every child born into her lineage. She may as wewll have been born ready to ascend into heaven, with how often she'd refer to the rivers of gold and wanting to meet The Father and wanting to see her father again.

Nobody had it in them to tell her that she was definitely going to hell, what with the way she treated people.

So the kids and the grandkids all stuck around. Every medical emergency was remedied preemptively because all of her grandchildren knew CPR and three of her five kids were doctors. No one was ready to let her go before she was really ready to go. Every day she lived was a day she might have become better, after all.

So Meemaw lived to be one hundred and thirty four years old. She was mostly skin and bones and there was nothing more that her legion of blood-related medics could do for her. On August 7th, Meemaw died, mean as a viper, bitter as ever.

The good news was that Tyson, the youngest grandson, had brought in the town necromancer.

The light came back to Meemaw's eyes the moment the spell was completed, not even a second after she'd passed.

"What the hell am I doing back here you pieces of shit?" Meemaw hissed, hacking up mucus and dust and bile.

"Believe me, Mrs. Emmany, heaven isn't all it's cracked up to be." The necromancer said, "They've got rivers of gold, but the wind blows right through you. It's no place for the old.

#free write

[loose-and-goose]

Classicstober Day 8 - Icarus

Icarus you dumbass,

You've got the sensibilities and self-restraint of a common moth.

But who could blame you?

You spent your formative years watching your dad break birds' necks

and pluck them until they were bare.

And with every crack

you wondered whether crack

it wouldn't have been better to just crack

pull a few feathers at a time

and set them free again.

Who could blame you?

No one knows how old you were

because your dad forgot to keep count

while he was busy crunching equations alongside hollow bones.

And there was no one else around to teach you self-restraint

but the ghost of a man-eater and thousands of winged skeletons

No one else around but death and the dead and your dad always adding to their number

Who could blame you?

Given the choice between the sun and the sea,

only one was known to end lives and hide horrors in the deep

while the other

never harmed anyone, only faithfully

rose and fell, rose and fell, trying to help you remember that:

Your birthday is coming up soon, again, you think.

Who could blame you?

That when gifted with wings,

you cowered from that which swallows men whole

and flew straight toward that which greeted you every morning with the promise that

today might be the day

everything changed?

#poetry #<- allegedly. #classicstober #icarus #mythology #tagamemnon #greek mythology